


Shards of Ice

by melonbutterfly



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Norse Mythology, Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Jötunn Loki, Loki's Kids, M/M, References to Norse Mythology, mentions of child abduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/pseuds/melonbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony tries not to look into anything relating to Loki's children too much. Maybe he should have; he might have been better prepared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shards of Ice

"Baldr," Thor says with an expression on his face Tony has never seen before. His voice is gravelly, low and with no inflection; it's the way he spoke of Loki sometimes, back then when they were still enemies and before they started the slow process of forgiveness. Suffice to say it makes the whole team go on alert, not that they hadn't been paying attention before – the arrival of a couple of Aesir in their garden, announced or not, is not something they take in a stride even after all this time. But Tony knows for a fact that only Sif, Volstagg, Hogun and Fandral were supposed to come for a visit so the arrival of this new guy, bearded, tall and with only one hand, is unexpected.

"Thor," Baldr says with a nod. Tony glances at Loki to gauge what is going on here, and the expression on Loki's face almost makes him miss Baldr's next words (something about having heard much about Midgard and deciding to check it out for himself). Loki looks… the word wrecked comes to mind, if there is a version of that that combines devastation with unbridled fury, covered up poorly by coldness and absolutely no body language whatsoever, Loki having gone completely rigid. Normally, Loki is not that easy to read, especially not with something that hits close to home, but Tony has learned that at one point the reverse is true; when Loki's heart is absolutely breaking he has no way of hiding that, too busy trying not to fall apart completely. That's a little how Loki looks right now, except it doesn't look new.

"How cordial of you," Thor says, still in that inflectionless tone, and by this point his voice doesn't even match how he'd sounded at his most angry at Loki, because with Loki there had always, always been the hurt and guilt and yearning accompanying it. Here there is nothing of the kind. And then Thor does something he has never done before, at least not where Tony or any of the other Avengers could witness; he's deliberately rude. "Midgard is out there," he says, gesturing towards the exit of the garden.

Baldr looks at him for a moment, glances at Loki who is from his angle physically shielded from view by Thor, and was that intentional?, then wordlessly turns around and leaves.

"JARVIS," Tony says into the tension he leaves behind, so thick it couldn't be cut with a razor.

"Yes, sir," JARVIS acknowledges from the mobile in his pocket, and a moment later, "Unknown Aesir has left the premises, appears to be walking down the road towards the city."

Well, good luck on that one, the city's a couple miles out. One of the main reasons Tony bought this house (apart from needing a vacationing home big and secure enough for the team) was its remote location.

Everybody relaxes a little with the news but before any of them can ask – and Tony has about a dozen questions right now, the answering of which will no doubt spawn more – Sif blurts, "My most sincere apologies." She looks deeply regretful. "We did not know he intended to accompany us on our visit until he joined us on the bifrost."

"We did not even know he was on Asgard," Hogun adds. "We would have warned you."

Thor looks at them for a moment, and that he does not accept an apology immediately is uncharacteristic also. But he does nod eventually and says, "It was not your fault." His voice is still too grave.

"What's going on?" Steve asks, tentative but still frowning. "Is that guy going to cause trouble?"

"No," Thor says, far too taciturn. "He is not." He does not turn around to look at Loki but somehow his body has unnoticably moved in such a way that he is completely shielding Loki from them now – from all of them, and that's so wrong, they're friends, Loki is part of the team. Tony gets up, intends walk around Thor to get to Loki but Thor shifts, focuses on him, and wow. This is even more serious a situation than Tony had thought, the way Thor is looking at him now – as if he might be a threat, _he_ , Tony, part of the same team as Thor for over three years and involved with Loki to boot. It renders Tony completely speechless.

"Who was that guy?" Natasha asks. "Baldr?"

Somehow, only when she says it does the name click in Tony's brain; he's read it before. It had something to do with one of Loki's sons, the wolf, he bit off Baldr's hand and ended up chained on a lonely island for his trouble or something like that. Tony tries not to look into anything relating to Loki's children too much, because it'll only make him insanely curious and something might slip out at an inopportune moment. And as they have learned, any moment is inopportune when the topic is Loki's children; Clint had made a horse joke once, early on, and Thor had nearly jumped on him in honest, righteous anger (Loki hadn't come out of his room for three days, but at the time most of them had been less concerned about that). It had taught all of them a lesson on boundaries, and also to never, ever mention Loki's children.

Thor looks at Hogun, and Tony has never seen him act so – so royal. Sure, Thor is comfortable giving orders, but that's generally during battle or early on when he was being a bit of a dick, but never has Tony witnessed him giving them with just a look.

Hogun turns to them and says with a tone of finality in his voice that cuts off any other questions, "Baldr is Prince Thor's half-brother. He will not return here."

Well, that explained exactly nothing. Tony frowns and shares a look with his friends, who wear varying mixed expressions of curiosity and confusion, but it's clear they're not going to talk about this now, so he turns back to the visiting Aesir and says, as jovial and unforced as he can manage, "So, now that you're here, who's up for barbecue?"

Thor relaxes minutely. "I am, my friend." He shifts a little and Tony misses the others' agreeing in because the space behind Thor is empty; Loki is gone.

Several hours later Tony has piled a plate – one of the big ones, because they'd had to cave on the issue of normal people plates the first time Thor's friends had come over; Aesir just eat far too much – with all of Loki's favorites, as hot and fresh as he could manage, and sets off to find his boyfriend. It had taken a while for all of them to relax and even longer for the mood to turn vaguely cheerful but it has finally happened, meaning nobody will notice if Tony is gone.

"JARVIS?" he asks as he steps into the house. "Where's Loki?"

"The indoor pool," is the prompt reply.

This is the second (and actually prime, not that anybody else knows that) reason Tony bought this house; a generous indoor pool area. It might seem ridiculous considering they're directly by the beach, but Tony had really wanted that extensive indoor pool. He had something very special planned for it and this house had been ideal for it because next to the long, big pool there was a separate, smaller pool. Not a whirlpool, that one existed too, but for some reason the original owner of the house had apparently wanted a separate pool next to the long one, and that had been perfect for what Tony had planned; better than he could have dreamed. It had then taken some fiddling and rebuilding and the invention of the appropriate temperature-resistant, stretchable materials, but in the end he had managed to design a pool for Loki that Loki could turn any temperature he wanted; he could even completely freeze it if he so wished. It had taken weeks of intense lab work to design that and make it work, especially because Tony had wanted for it to be a surprise and thus couldn't ask Loki to test prototypes. Pepper, when she had heard about it, had said "That is the sweetest love declaration I have ever seen from you", and she had gotten her fair share of them in her time, so she would know. And Tony had actually gotten a kiss out of it – not that it wouldn't have been completely worth it without (yes, Tony is that far gone), because Loki had been stunned and as happy as Tony has ever seen him (and that's really all that Tony wanted, yes, yes, moving on). Three days after Tony had introduced the pool to Loki (and the rest of the house to everyone) Loki had come to him late one evening, hair dripping and skin still faintly blue, and kissed him, hot and cold and completely breathtaking, and he had said "I did not realize" and, more importantly, "yes".

That had been nine months ago, and Loki had said "yes" a couple of more times since then – as had Tony. Not a week goes by, though, without Loki popping over to the beach house and taking a dip in his pool for an opportunity to completely let his second nature free without having to worry about consequences. Tony is honestly considering trying to figure out a way to make something like it for him in the tower because they can't go to the beach house all that often; superheroes don't really get vacation time. What can he say, he likes seeing Loki in his Jötunn form, and he especially likes the fact that while Loki isn't really comfortable with anybody else, especially Thor, seeing him that way, Tony is completely fine.

When Tony gets to the indoor pool the air is cold enough to turn his breath into clouds and the only part of Loki he can see is the tip of his head, dark hair plastered to his face, just far enough above the water so he can breathe through his nose. A thin sheet of ice covers the surface of his pool, not so thick it would take some effort (for Loki) to get out, but thick enough that Tony can only just see the outlines of his body, blue against blue.

"Hey," he says a bit tentatively. When Loki doesn't react – not welcoming him but, more importantly, not sending him away – he steps forwards, up to the pool, and crouches down on the floor. "I brought you some food."

But he already knew Loki likely wasn't going to eat it, so he's not surprised when Loki doesn't react. Ice has bloomed on Loki's head, flowering out like a thin helmet, tiny crystals clinging between strands of hair. If Tony were any sort of photographer he'd take countless of pictures of Loki like this, otherworldly and captivating, but the only artist on the team is Steve and he sticks primarily to drawing.

"Hey," Tony says again, sitting down cross-legged (he's very grateful for his material, the floor isn't cold at all). He leans in a little; Loki is too far away for him to touch but he reaches out anyway, puts his fingertips on the ice. "Come on, you need to eat a little. I brought you the biggest steak I could find."

When Loki still doesn't react he lets out a breath and decides to stop beating around the bush. "So, that guy, Baldr? I can forbid him from entering my property, that means he can't show up here anymore."

Loki shifts a little, ice cracking around him; it seems to break the ban of stillness around him and he rises from the water, hands and shoulders breaking through the ice as he reaches up to push his hair out of his face. Little splinters of ice rain from his head as he cards his fingers through his hair, revealing a blue face and piercing red eyes. At the beginning Loki was incredibly tense like this, always waiting for revulsion, but what Tony feels towards this form of his is nothing of the kind; not even close. It had taken several months for Loki to truly realize this though, and even longer for him to relax. Tony is rather smug about it.

"He is holding my son prisoner," Loki says, voice low and ice cold in a way that has nothing to do with his form.

Tony never accused Tony of having tact or knowing when to keep his mouth shut, so he doesn't even consider letting Loki tell him at his own pace. "Why?"

Loki's mouth twists. "Because he hates him? Hates me? He never took the time to explain his true motives to me, but that certainly is a factor, for all he claims that it is for 'public safety'."

"Public safety," Tony repeats. "There's a myth on Midgard that Fenrir bit off his hand."

"Because Baldr challenged him!" Loki roars; the temperature drops so rapidly the water cracks and Tony starts to worry about the tiles even as he starts to shiver – there are none surrounding this pool, it's all the material he invented for exactly this purpose, but the tiles do start up at one point. "He thought merely because my son was young that he would be easy to defeat, and when that was not the case he took his revenge for the humiliation."

Something else nobody ever accused Tony of is regard for his own safety. He reaches out, touches Loki's cheekbone; the moment before his fingertips make contact the temperature rises again, just enough so Tony won't get frostbite from the contact.

"I am not in the mood for games," Loki grinds out, a muscle twitching in his cheek, but he lets Tony touch him.

"This is not a game," Tony replies seriously. "Where is he holding him?"

"We do not know," Loki hisses, and now he does pull away, half turns, ice cracking with the motion. "Do you not think that if we did, we would allow for him to remain prisoner there?"

"No, of course not." Tony bites his lower lip, this time knows better than to touch. "Odin's not doing anything about it, I gather? Why does he let some random guy do that to your son? People still don't know you're- adopted, don't they, so he's losing face letting that happen to his grandson."

"He does not-" Loki pauses, frustrated, and turns back to Tony. "Baldr is mother's- Frigga's oldest son; he was of age before she even met the king. He has always been jealous of Thor and me. He- after Fenrir defeated him, he swore he would take his revenge and left the kingdom. We did not hear of him again until Fenrir vanished, and Baldr returned – he claimed to not know anything about it, but everyone knew it to not be true. Odin ordered him to return my son, threatened- but Baldr had gotten married while in exile, to the daughter of the king of the Dark Elves. There was nothing any of us could do without inciting a war, and as always, we cannot afford to fight a war on two fronts." Loki's voice has turned on a bitter tone, like this has been a bone of contention for him for a while. And hell, it must have.

It's incredibly frustrating. Loki is in so much pain about it still; the mere sight of Baldr brought it all back to the forefront and even Thor, who can forgive a lot, is still so furious with the guy. Tony's fingers itch with the need to do something, anything about it, to help, to solve this problem, but he knows there isn't anything he could possibly do. Because Loki, Thor and, it sounds like, even Odin clearly have already tried anything they can and if they haven't found a solution, then it's unlikely there is one, and even more unlikely that Tony is going to find it quickly. Baldr clearly is a first class asshole of the worst kind but taking revenge on him isn't going to solve the problem either; it's only going to make things worse, take away any possibility of ever finding Loki's son again. And that, he realizes, is probably what hurts Loki the most, apart from his son being taken in the first place.

So what Tony needs to do now is stop asking and try to make Loki feel better or, if that's impossible (and it likely is), at least try not to make it any worse. Whatever else he wants to know, he can ask Thor later. Sating his curiosity is not worth hurting Loki in the process.

He reaches out, touches Loki's shoulder. It's cold, icily so, but not freezing, he isn't risking frostbite keeping the contact, so he tightens his grip, pulls Loki in. The ice splinters and cracks as Loki steps up to him, allows Tony to pull him close. Hugging him will be counter-productive, Tony knows from experience; not when Loki is angry like this, angry and desperate and hurting. Instead he cards his fingers through Loki's hair, even colder than his skin, flicking shards of ice out of it. His chest is burning with the need to say something, anything – that he'll try anything, pointless promises of vengeance and protection that would go unfulfilled and would only leave Loki feeling patronized and condescended to. That he's there for Loki. It's feeble, means little considering what Loki is dealing with right now, and Loki knows it anyway.

So Tony keeps his mouth shut and just touches Loki, doesn't kiss him, doesn't hug him, and Loki stares into the distance, hands balled into fists encased by ice, mind far away.


End file.
